Corporations are Cyborgs: Organizations elicit anger but not sympathy when they can think but cannot feel

• Companies are seen as capable of having agentic mental states (thinking), but not experiential mental states (feeling).
• This asymmetry in mental state ascription causes companies to elicit anger as villains, but not sympathy as victims.
• Increasing familiarity or anthropomorphizing companies increases perceptions of experiential states and restores sympathy.
• An organization seen as high in experiential states and low in agentic states elicits less anger and more sympathy.
• Moral judgment depends on mental state ascription, and not all mental states scale up from individuals to organizations.

Across four experiments, participants saw companies as capable of having ‘agentic’ mental states, such as having intentions, but incapable of having ‘experiential’ mental states, such as feeling pain. This difference in mental state ascription caused companies to elicit anger as villains, but not sympathy as victims. Differences in sympathy were mediated by perceived capacities for experience. When participants had a background leading companies (i.e. senior executives) or when a recognizable brand (i.e. Google) was anthropomorphized, perceptions of experience increased and the sympathy gap disappeared. An organization seen as high in experience and low in agency (i.e. sports team) elicited more sympathy and less anger than companies. Our findings elucidate the mechanisms underlying the link between mental state ascription and moral judgment; the tendency to ascribe some mental states to organizations more easily than others; and the phenomenon whereby companies elicit anger as villains but fail to elicit sympathy as victims.